ARoS Triennial, a new international contemporary art exhibition in Aarhus, Denmark

The ARoS Art Museum is delighted to announce the first ARoS Triennial, a new international contemporary art exhibition that will be presented every three years in Aarhus, Denmark.

Taking place from June 3 to July 30, 2017, the launch of the ARoS Triennial will be one of the highlights of Aarhus’s year as European Capital of Culture 2017. Led by Erlend G. Høyersten, Director of ARoS Aarhus Art Museum, the first Triennial, entitled THE GARDEN – End of Times; Beginning of Times, will explore how man has depicted and altered nature according to his view of the world.

The first ARoS Triennial will be the largest exhibition staged by the museum and within the city of Aarhus to date. Spread over several venues around the city, including the two main gallery spaces at the ARoS Art Museum and along 4km of coastline surrounding the city, the Triennial will feature work by a range internationally recognised artists.

Covering the past 400 years, the Triennial will be staged in three sections: The Past, The Present and The Future, and will reflect on man’s perception of nature according to philosophical, religious and political changes. The exhibition will explore how, throughout history, the garden has been viewed as a place to carry out scientific studies, an oasis for solitary reflection or a place of entertainment. In our culture, the garden is a meeting place between civilisation and nature; a meditative place caught between two worlds. The garden meets various needs in different cultural contexts and is therefore the perfect image of diversity that makes up our world.

The Past will explore the landscape tradition and depiction of nature viewed through the lens of art and the history of ideas, and will be presented in two of the larger galleries at ARoS Aarhus Art Museum. It will highlight the changes that have taken place in the relations between nature and man, and how different historical periods have altered their mutual influence, often expressed in art. The basis of the exhibition will be the baroque garden architecture of the mid-1600s, as well as German Romanticism in the early 1800s, the breakthrough of modernism at the beginning of the 20th century and Land Art of the 1960s.

The Present will take place across the city of Aarhus and will focus on current artistic investigations into nature’s status in society and its role in the new global situation characterised by massive demographic changes, diaspora, immigration, and the movement of global capital. The central focus of The Present will be the impossible task of presenting a homogeneous and stable world in a fragmented reality.

The Future will be presented along 4 km of coast on the route from Tangkrogen to Ballehage as a series of outdoor installations. It will seek to unravel the new challenges faced by man on the threshold of what could be described as the anthropogenic age, an era that punctures our usual picture of man’s special position in relation to nature, with nature as a passive Romantic entity.

An extensive three-volume catalogue will be published to accompany the exhibition.

The ARoS Aarhus Art Museum (Aarhus, Denmark) was established in 1859. It is Denmark’s largest art collection outside of Copenhagen and is widely known for Your panorama rainbow by Olafur Eliasson. The museum owns a notable collection of Danish art that spans 300 years, with works from the Danish Golden Age, COBRA paintings, Neue Wilden from the 1980s, modernist pieces from the 1900s, abstract art and modern works by Miwa Yanagi, Carsten Höller, Tony Oursler, James Turrell, Bill Viola, Pipilotti Rist, Elmgreen & Dragset and more.